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The iMac G4 features an LCD mounted on an adjustable arm above a hemisphere containing a full-size, tray-loading optical drive and a fourth-generation PowerPC G4 74xx-series processor. The internals such as the hard drive, motherboard, etc. was placed in the "dome" instead of the LCD panel as it would be too heavy. The arm allowed the display to hold almost any angle around the dome-shaped bottom. The iMac G4 was sold only in white, and was not translucent like the iMac G3. The machine was sold with the Apple Pro Keyboard and Apple Pro Mouse, which would be later redesigned and renamed the Apple Keyboard and Apple Mouse, respectively. Optional Apple Pro Speakers, which were of better quality than the internal speakers, were also available. The Apple Pro Speakers use a unique adapter, designed to work only with a select few Apple Macintosh models.

The iMac G4 originally included both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X, due to the machine being released the year Mac OS 9 was discontinued. When running newer versions of Mac OS X (Tiger and Leopard), the iMac G4's GeForce4 MX GPU is not capable of Core Image rendering. This causes some minor graphical issues. One such issue would be the lack of the Dashboard ripple effect when a widget is introduced. Another would be an opaque menu bar in Mac OS X Leopard.

It was originally known as the The New iMac, while the existing iMac G3 continued to be sold for several months. During this time, Apple had all but eliminated CRT displays from its product line. However, the LCD iMacs were unable to match the low price point of the iMac G3, largely due to the higher cost of the LCD technology at the time. The iMac G3 was obsolete by this point, but low-cost machines were particularly important for the education market. Because of this affordability issue, Apple created the eMac in April 2002 and ended production of the iMac G3. The iMac G4 was then marketed as the "iMac" until its discontinuation, then was retroactively labeled iMac G4 to distinguish itself from the succeeding iMac G5 in August 2004.

Apple advertised the iMac G4 as having the adjustability of a desk lamp, and was nicknamed the "iLamp", similar to "Luxo Jr.", who was featured in a short film produced by Pixar, another venture of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. One of the advertisements for the machine featured it sitting in a store window "reacting" to every move made by a passer-by on the street. At the end, when the man sticks out his tongue, the iMac responds by opening its optical drive.[1] It was also known as the "Sunflower".

The Gateway Profile was one of the few Wintel competitors to the iMac G4 in the all-in-one LCD computer market. A reviewer noted that the Profile had better processing power, due to its Intel Pentium 4, whereas the iMac was hampered because its G4 chip lacked the 1 MB L2 cache found on the higher-end Power Mac. The iMac had clear advantages in LCD screen quality (it uses a digital LCD as opposed to an analog LCD), ergonomics (particularly the flexible monitor arm), and multimedia. The reviewer concluded that the iMac worked well as an introduction to the Macintosh ecosystem, but noted that their relatively high prices were approaching that of laptops, which are portable and have higher resolution LCD screens.[2]